Search Results: Americana from Raptis Rare Books

1861. Rare Civil War era Confederate States of America Flag, in use between July 2 and November 28, 1861 commemorating the admittance of Tennessee and North Carolina into the Confederacy. Cotton, hand-sewn and double-sided. The entire piece measures 36 inches by 50.5 inches. In near fine condition.

London: Seller, Price & Senex, 1703. Rare 17th century John Seller map of New England and New York from Daniel Fenning's A New System of Geography. One page, with intricate topographical details and hand-colored borders, the map displays the eastern portion of New York and New England and includes Long Island, Martha's Vineyard, Nantucket, Block Island, and Rhode Island. In near fine condition. Seventeenth century English cartographer, compass maker, and map seller John Seller was appointed hydrographer to the King in March of 1671. In that year he published his first volume of charts and sailing directions, The English Pilot, which would run through many editions until the end of the eighteenth century. The trade in maritime maps and charts had until then been dominated by the Dutch. Seller additionally published several textbooks and nautical almanacs including Practical Navigation (1669) and A Pocket Book Containing Several Choice Collections in Arithmetic, Geometry, Surveying, Dialing,… Read More

Rare scrapbook from the collection of Marie Prince, documenting her tenure at The Westover preparatory school for girls in the early 1940s. Quarto, bound in three quarters morocco, the scrapbook contains several letters, notes, and large format photographs. In near fine condition. The Westover School in Middlebury, Connecticut was founded in 1909 by Mary Hillard with a campus designed by one of the first American female architects as well as a survivor of the sinking of the RMS Lusitania, Theodate Pope Riddle. Notable Westover graduates include Edith Cummings and Isabel Rockefeller.

Mineola, New York: The Foundation Press, Inc, 1979. The 1979 supplement to Tribe's American Constitutional Law. Octavo, original wrappers. Signed by the author on the front free endpaper, "Best wishes, Laurence Tribe 2/09." In near fine condition. Ownership name to the front panel.

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c. 1860. Rare original painting of the 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln. After a photograph by Civil War photographer Alexander Gardner. Scottish photographer Alexander Gardner immigrated to the United States in 1856 where he became best known for his photographs of the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln, and the execution of the conspirators to Lincoln's assassination. In near fine condition. In a period frame. The entire piece measures 20.75 by 16.75 inches. Rare and desirable. Abraham Lincoln served as the 16th President of the United States from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He led the United States through its Civil War, and in doing so preserved the Union of the United States of America, abolished slavery, and strengthened the federal government. Lincoln began constructing his cabinet on election night and sought to create a cabinet that would unite the Republican party. His eventual cabinet would include his primary rivals for the Republican… Read More

Rare cast metal relief portrait of President Abraham Lincoln in profile. Housed in a custom circular frame with gilt decorative floral reliefs. The entire piece measures 16 inches by 16 inches. A handsome example. Abraham Lincoln served as the 16th President of the United States from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He led the United States through its Civil War, and in doing so preserved the Union of the United States of America, abolished slavery, and strengthened the federal government. Lincoln sought to create a Presidential cabinet that would unite the Republican party. His eventual cabinet would include his primary rivals for the Republican nomination and, although his appointees held differing views on economic issues, all were opposed to the expansion of slavery into the territories of the United States. The most senior cabinet post of Secretary of State was appointed to William Seward who had recently failed to win the 1860 Republican presidential nomination and… Read More

April 21, 1864. American naval commission signed by Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States and Gideon Welles as Secretary of the Navy. Folio, partially engraved on vellum the document is dated April 21, 1864 and promotes Charles W. Tracy to the rank of Lieutenant. In near fine condition. Matted and framed with a portrait of Lincoln and engraved plate. The Commission measures 19 inches by 16 inches. The entire piece measures 34 inches by 29.5 inches. Abraham Lincoln served as the 16th President of the United States from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He led the United States through the American Civil War, the country's greatest moral, cultural, constitutional, and political crisis, and in doing so preserved the Union of the United States of America, abolished slavery, and strengthened the federal government. Lincoln ran for President in 1860, sweeping the North in victory. The South was outraged by Lincoln's election, and in response secessionists implemented… Read More

Washington, D.C.: War Department, Adjutant General's Office, 1864-1869. Abraham Lincoln served as the 16th President of the United States from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He led the United States through the American Civil War, the country's greatest moral, cultural, constitutional, and political crisis, and in doing so preserved the Union of the United States of America, abolished slavery, and strengthened the federal government. Lincoln ran for President in 1860, sweeping the North in victory. The South was outraged by Lincoln's election, and in response secessionists implemented plans to leave the Union before he took office in March 1861. War began in April 1861 when secessionist forces attacked Fort Sumter in South Carolina, just over a month after Lincoln's inauguration and, after years of deadly military conflict, officially ended on April 9, 1865, when Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at the Battle of… Read More

Davenport, Iowa, 1865. Abraham Lincoln issued the The Emancipation Proclamation, or Proclamation 95, on January 1st, 1865. The executive order changed the federal legal status of more than 3.5 million enslaved African Americans from slave to free and made the abolition of slavery an explicit goal of the Union war effort. To ensure emancipation, Lincoln pushed for passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, and insisted that Reconstruction plans for Southern states require abolition in new state constitutions. Congress passed the 13th Amendment by the necessary two-thirds vote on January 31, 1865, and it was ratified by the states on December 6, 1865, ending legal slavery.

Springfield, IL, 1849. Rare autograph letter signed by and entirely in the hand of the 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln. One page, the letter reads in full, "Springfield May 7, 1849 Hon G. W. Rives Dear Sir, You overrate my capacity to serve you. Not one man recommended by me has yet been appointed to any thing, little or big, except a few who had no opposition. Besides this, at the very inauguration I commenced trying to get a Min[n]esota appointment for Dr. Henry, and have not yet succeeded; and I would not now, lessen his chance, by recommending any living man for any thing in that Territory. It is my recollection that you sent me an application to be P.M. at Paris. Am I mistaken? Very truly yours A. Lincoln." Over a decade prior to his election as the 16th President of the United States in 1861, Lincoln served a single term in the House of Representatives between 1847 and 1849. A self-professed 'old line Whig', he was assigned to the Committee on Post Office and Post Roads and… Read More

Springfield, Missouri: Dow & Adams, Publishers, 1883. First edition of Holcombe and Adams' account of the Battle of Wilson's Creek. Octavo, original publisher's binding decorated in gilt, illustrated. In very good condition. The Battle of Wilson's Creek, also known as the Battle of Oak Hills, was the first major battle of the Trans-Mississippi Theater of the American Civil War. It was fought on August 10, 1861, near Springfield, Missouri, which was officially a neutral state, but its governor, Claiborne Fox Jackson, supported the South and secretly collaborated with Confederate troops. The Confederate victory allowed commanding Maj. Gen. Sterling Price to lead the Missouri State Guard north in a campaign culminating at the siege of Lexington, Missouri and effectively gave the Confederates control of southwestern Missouri.

London: Printed for T. Jefferys, 1761. Benjamin Franklin earned the title of "The First American" for his early and indefatigable campaigning for colonial unity, initially as an author and spokesman in London for several colonies. As the first United States Ambassador to France, he exemplified the emerging American nation. Franklin was foundational in defining the American ethos as a marriage of the practical values of thrift, hard work, education, community spirit, self-governing institutions, and opposition to authoritarianism both political and religious, with the scientific and tolerant values of the Enlightenment. In the words of historian Henry Steele Commager, "In a Franklin could be merged the virtues of Puritanism without its defects, the illumination of the Enlightenment without its heat." To Walter Isaacson, this makes Franklin "the most accomplished American of his age and the most influential in inventing the type of society America would become."

[1875]. Proclaimed on February 8, 1839, the Treaty with the Miami was made and concluded at the Forks of the Wabash in the State of Indiana, between the United States of America, by Commissioner Abel C. Pepper, and the Miami tribe of Indians. The Miami agreed to cede the remainder of tribal lands in their possession to the United States including 511,000 acres left of the Big Miami Reserve in exchange for $550,000, agreeing to vacate the area within five years to a 500,000 acre reservation in Kansas. The Treaty with the Miami, along with several other treaties between Indian tribes and the United States government during the first decades of the nineteenth century, marked a dramatic increase in calculated U.S. government efforts to strategically and forcibly remove the old Northwest Territory's American Indians from their ancestral homelands to a designated Indian Territory (roughly, present-day Oklahoma) west of the Mississippi River. The Indian Removal Act, the key law which authorized the… Read More

Philadelphia: Printed by Francis Childs and Joseph Swaine, Printers to the United States, [1791].

Tallahassee: Printed by Dyke & Carlisle, 1862. Rare first edition documenting the acts and resolutions passed by the General Assembly of Florida in the first year of the American Civil War. Octavo, disbound. In very good condition. Scarce and desirable. Among the 34 United States of America in February 1861, seven Southern slave states individually declared their secession from the country to form the Confederate States of America, causing the outbreak of the most studied and written about episode in United States History: the American Civil War. The Confederacy grew to include eleven states, all of them slave-holding. After the secession of South Carolina on December 20, 1860, the "cotton states" of Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas followed suit, seceding in January and February 1861

Montgomery, Alabama: Shorter & Reid, State Printers, 1861. Rare first edition of this Confederate imprint recording new laws and regulations pertaining to freed slaves. Octavo, bound in period quarter calf over boards, red morocco spine label with gilt titles. In very good condition. Codes amended at the Session of the General Assembly of Alabama, Held in the City of Montgomery in January 1861 include #24, section 1045: Freed Colored Mariners guilty of a misdemeanor for serving on any other vessel than the one to which he belongs, punishable by trial of 100 lashes, master of the vessel to pay all cost and fines; and #25, sections 1,2 &3 pertaining to the punishment of liquor sales to Free Negroes and slaves (Parish & Willingham, 2620). The Assembly was presided over by Governor Andrew B. Moore, House of Representatives Speaker A.B. Meek, and President of the Senate J.D. Rather.

1861-63. Rare collection of the official legislative acts passed by the General Assembly and House of Delegates of Virginia, CSA, from 1861 to 1863. Octavo, seven volumes, bound in contemporary calf and tan cloth. Eleven Confederate imprints, in seven volumes. Rare and desirable.

Pittsburgh: Carnegie Music Hall, 1919. First edition of Charles M. Schwab's Address at the Memorial Service of his mentor Andrew Carnegie. Octavo, original wrappers. Presentation copy, inscribed by Charles M. Schwab on the front free endpaper, "To my friend George Steelman, with sincere regards, C. M. Schwab." In near fine condition. Rare and desirable signed.

Chicago: Government Printing Office, 1925. First edition of this address by President Coolidge. Octavo, original wrappers. Boldly signed by Calvin Coolidge. In near fine condition. Housed in a custom folding case. The 30th President of the United States, Calvin Coolidge began his political career in Massachusetts state politics. His response to the Boston Police Strike of 1919 thrust him into the national spotlight and gave him a reputation as a man of decisive action. Soon after, he was elected as the 29th Vice President in 1920, and succeeded to the presidency upon the sudden death of Warren G. Harding in 1923.